RESTAURANTS: At long last, Dublin has a restaurant that really does manage to redefine Indian food
IT'S NOT EASY TO find Ananda, the new Indian restaurant in the Dundrum Town Centre, but bear in mind that I find Dundrum utterly disorientating as my mental picture of it is firmly set in circa 1984, a time when I was still schoolmastering in the foothills of the Dublin mountains.
Even so, given Ananda's credentials, it's a bit strange to find it rubbing shoulders with the likes of McDonald's and TGI Friday's. You just don't expect a restaurant of this calibre to be in the area dominated by what the industry diplomatically calls "casual dining".
Ananda is a pleasantly relaxing sort of place, but there's nothing casual about it at all. Certainly not about the food. This is a joint venture between Atul Kochar who was the first Indian chef in Britain to gain a Michelin star, and Asheesh Dewan, who created the Jaipur chain.
Kochar's Benares restaurant is popular with Russian moguls and the general run of the very rich who confine their eating out to the environs of London's Berkeley Square, occasionally straying a few blocks westwards to the metropolis's original Nobu.
And so it's pretty encouraging to find that Ananda has imported many of the influences and styles, but not the prices. The chef here, Sunil Ghai, has worked at Benares and it shows in the subtle reworking of classics and the general sense of breaking the mould of Indian cooking as many of us know it.
I enjoy chilli heat but much of the appeal lies in that curious balancing point between pleasure and pain. The endorphin rush that follows genuine Thai spicing is a case in point. But I also enjoy spices and I tend to feel a little cheated if my palate is anaesthetised before I can appreciate them.
And so I felt very much at home at Ananda. Yes, they do chilli heat here but the emphasis appears to be much more upon flavours than on sensory deprivation.
Gurgabi Duck Tasting was an excellent starting point. This was a cold terrine of confit duck studded with tiny pearl onions dyed with beetroot juice and finely sliced warm pink roast duck breast with tikka masala and star anise spicing served with a brilliantly tart orange
jelly. Sounds good? It was even better in the mouth.
A salad of artichoke with rocket and goat's cheese with a kumquat and sweet chilli dressing was much better than it sounds (like a ghastly attempt at fusion in a pretentious restaurant) but it was, perhaps, the most ordinary dish of the evening. Coorg Ki Pork Champ was robust stuff: a nicely chargrilled pork chop with crunchy, spiced cabbage and a fiery, suitably sharp vindaloo sauce: simple, inventive, generous.
Murgh Firdausee was as mild as a May morning but gloriously if gently flavoured. This was chicken breast stuffed with scented rose petals and pistachios, sliced and served in a very rich, creamy korma sauce infused with lavender. Yes, I know. It sounds a bit confused but it wasn't. It was simply gorgeous.
Peshawari naan bread, stuffed with almonds, raisins and coconut was a meal in itself, hovering between sweet and savoury with a salty, buttery kick. Garlic, onion and coriander naan was more conventional but light and packed with flavour.
Puds included a splendidly unsweet mousse of bitter chocolate and as many lovely things that can be done with mango as you could ever imagine.
As you may have gathered by now, we had a very good time. And not just because of the quality of the food and the attentiveness of the service (and there may have been a measure of Restaurant Critic Alert here) but because it means that, at last, Dublin has a restaurant that really does manage to redefine Indian food.
The bill, with mineral water, coffee and a bottle of white wine, came to €132.35. tdoorley@irish-times.ie
THE SMART MONEY
Coorg Ki Pork Champ with a glass of house wine and a coffee will set you back just over €30.
WINE CHOICE
It's disappointing to see that the wine list here does not attempt anything as radical as the one at Benares where matching food and wine is taken very seriously indeed. It's a pretty average, commercial range of the sort to be found in lots of middle-of-the-road restaurants. Bright spots include Esperanza Verdejo Viura at €5.50 a glass, La Val Albarinho (€29), which we quite liked, Chateau Patache d'Aux 2001 (€39), which is a mature and pretty decent cru bourgeois from Bordeaux, Delas Côtes du Ventoux (€23), dark but medium-bodied Dom Rafael Mouchao (€27) from Portugal which, bizarrely, is spelled phonetically on the list ("moorchau"), and Vasse Felix Cabernet (€44) from the Margaret River.